How the Right Corporate Branding Makes You an Industry Leader
How the Right Corporate Branding Makes You an Industry Leader
Many Fortune 500 companies have risen from humble beginnings to multi-billion dollar status. For the vast majority of these corporate success stories, their achievements were the result of smart branding. Through strategic corporate branding, companies such as McDonalds, Starbucks, Gucci, and Coca-Cola rose to industry domination.
A corporate brand is a form of power that enables a corporation to climb the highest rungs of revenue success. In fact, a company’s most valuable asset may not be its inventory or revenues, but rather its brand equity. A corporate brand, in the hands of a professional, is the main key that unlocks success’s vault. By harnessing the consumer psychology powers of corporate branding, you are building your company’s foundation for success.
The Definition of Corporate Branding
Corporate branding is a type of marketing practice that hedges the company name with its products. This type of practice is an excellent leverage tool that increases the value of the company’s brand through mass recognition. Corporate branding can be thought of as an imprint, an image that the general population associates with a company.
Types of Corporate Branding
There are several different types of corporate branding that a business should consider. Depending upon your business strategy, along with your current industry dynamics, there are different branding techniques suitable to build your market leadership.
• Fighting branding counteracts a threat made by a competitor. A company may introduce a new fighting brand at a lower price to compete with other firms, while still keeping their premium branding reputation intact.
• Economy branding is designed to gain market share by luring away customers with lower pricing than the market leader.
• Premium branding positions the company as the luxury or leading producer of a certain product or service. For example, Rolex and Tag Heuer position themselves as the premium watchmakers.
• Umbrella branding occurs when a corporation’s name is used as the brand name of all the products. Sony, Toshiba, Apple, and HP are all excellent examples of the umbrella name utilized for all of its product offerings.
• Family branding is used to relate different brand names into one family. For example, Nestle utilizes Nesquik and Nescafe as brand names for their different products.
• Individual branding provides different brand name strategies for each different product the company produces.
• Employment branding is extremely important in industries where companies must attract top talent in order to continuously innovate. A tremendous example of a company that utilizes strong employment branding is Google.
Implementing a successful branding strategy
Each of these types of branding can be used for different reasons. However, regardless of which strategy your company chooses, it is important to remember that there are three factors to successful branding:
1. The brand name must be able to be protected legally, such as a word, term, or phrase that is not already in common use. For example, some companies have come into legal issues with the using the term “pilates” in their branding because it technically has already been copyrighted.
2. The branding should be easy for the consumer to pronounce.
3. The strategy should ensure that the slogan, motto, and symbols are easy to remember. A great example is BMW, whose memorable symbol and slogan has been the simply unwavering, “the ultimate driving machine.”
Whatever type of branding technique is used, it is crucial that a company portrays a fresh vision and statement to consumers. Through successful branding, a company can rise from a start-up in the garage to celebrity status as a regular household name. When you develop the right corporate branding strategy for your company, you are creating one of the most powerful pieces of equity for your business.